when i take off driving
Today’s Scripture sounds so simply, well, simple. Doesn’t it? God sends Philip down that road, where he promptly bumps into a potential convert. After just a little Bible study, it all ends with a baptism!
It’s all so neat and tidy. Isn’t it? It’s enough to make you wonder, why can’t it be like that for me? Because the truth is, life rarely feels so cut and dried. More often than not, life seems to go the opposite way. The paths we tend to find ourselves on aren’t clear-cut. They’re rocky, meandering, and we’re not altogether sure if they’re leading anywhere at all. Much less to a destination God would have us reach…
In fact, that may be why you’re here today. I know for many of us, church is something of a last stop. We think a little religion might help us make heads and tails of the path we’re on. We hope the pastor will have some words to get off the Godless track and onto the blessed fast lane of the celestial superhighway.
The good news is, I do! Any pastor who’s worth their salt does! The bad news is, the path the Lord would have you walk doesn’t look a thing like the way you expect!
…When life has you in a tailspin, you always do well to go to Scripture. But study on it carefully. For instance, did you notice the parenthetical comment in today’s Scripture?
There Philip is, minding his own business, when an angel of the Lord tells him to go south to that road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. Now, that might sound blessedly forthright, but notice how, almost as an afterthought, the narrator informs us this is a wilderness road. The path God sends Philip down is a deserted one! In essence, God sends Philip on a road no-one has any business being on! God’s idea of a cleared path is the rocky one!
As we know, that deserted road is the one where Philip bumps into an unlikely convert! Even more unlikely, it’s that path, in the middle of nowhere, the middle of the desert, where Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch happen upon enough water for a baptism! Water on a deserted path! Water in the desert, period! Those God-forsaken paths are the ones God loves most to bless!
…Is that where you are today? Are you on a rocky, winding, bewildering path? Is it hard to see where God is leading, or why God would lead you there? Well, if that’s the case, let it be all the evidence you need that it’s God who’s leading you, not your own whims and will!
We always get God’s guidance all wrong. We tend to think we’re following God when everything goes our way. But doesn’t that just sound like more of our own control?!? In fact, with God, just the opposite is true. When you’re not where you want to be, God has you most where God wants you! God’s office is at the end of your rope!
The hard path is the one God loves to lead you down every time! For that rocky ground is the place God brings you to the foot of the cross! Ground zero for faith, Mount Golgotha!
Consider your own life. Where was it you came by that hard-won faith? Where was it your learned the difficult lesson to 'let go and let God’? We all know, for as much lip service as we pay to these bromides, it’s not until we find ourselves in the shadow of the cross that we actually let go. And not because we choose to, either! But because we had to! Because we couldn’t hold on any longer.
Yet, it was there, of all places, that we encountered God most powerfully! Wasn’t it? This is called the Theology of the Cross. Or, in today’s Scripture, it’s called bumping into the last person you expected at that last place you expected and God getting to work right there in the middle of it all!
True spirituality is life lived in real life. In other words, faith actually happens in life as it actually is, twists and turns, and all! Dead-ends, and all! Rough and rocky ground, and all!
…Are you on an unlikely, rough and rowdy path? Have you known a dry and barren day or two? If that’s the case, then get ready! God’s probably just leading you to the last place you expected, so you can meet the last person you expected.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name’s Ryan. A fellow lost sinner, found by the grace of God. Not at the destination, but on the way. And not the way I expected, either. But the one God chose!
And like Philip, I have a question for you: do you have something in common with the Ethiopian eunuch? Do you need to be baptized? Well, if you do, let’s do the deed right now! There’s nothing to prevent you! But if you are baptized, let me remind you of something; when God claimed you in baptism, God claimed all of you!
There’s no longer any path you can find yourself on that is truly God-forsaken! When Jesus overcame the devil in the wilderness, he did so once and for all! And now he’s busy turning all those deserts into the oasis where every single one of God’s baptismal promises is kept for you! Making those beloved words of the 23rd Psalm prove true for you! “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil: for thou art with me.”
Soon you will go from here. And all those easy old answers will disappear like smoke in the wind. And when that happens, because it does, that’s nothing less than the Holy Spirit guiding you, too! Guiding you to the last place you expected. That deserted road where all your self-sufficiency comes to nothing and Jesus and his righteousness become your everything!
Go, you’ll be alright. And when it doesn’t seem like it, let that dispel all your doubts about the path you’re on! Let it be, like Philip, nothing less than the Holy Spirit’s guidance. You don’t need to have all the answers or a clear path to perfection. All you have to do is lift one foot and take the next step. Who knows what just around the corner! A friend in faith? Someone dying to hear about the love of God? An oasis? The sooner you stop looking for what you think you should expect, the sooner you’ll spot all three and more!
With that, it’s high time for you to go on your way rejoicing! And you have plenty to rejoice about, too! It’s God who’s leading you. Turning your wilderness into the path where God’s mercy follows you all the days of your life! And what’s more, the journey’s just getting started! All over again.
Comments
Post a Comment